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Kingdom
Under Fire: Heroes

Score: 8.3 / 10

Some games surprise me just by showing up
on my desk. This was the case with Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes, a sequel
(actually a prequel to last years Kingdom Under Fire: Crusaders) that
should have enjoyed more media exposure leading up to it’s launch about
a week and a half ago. But when someone like J Allard, Corporate Vice
President and Chief XNA Architect, tells you at E3 2005, “We’re not
doing Xbox 1 games anymore. We’re done. Done. Conker is the last one,
which is in manufacturing. All our attention is on Xbox 360,” you have
to wonder how far under the radar Heroes was when one of the head
honchos over at Microsoft doesn’t even realize it exists. However, fans
of Crusaders will have seen Heroes coming.

Set in a period five years before the conflict recounted in Crusaders,
Heroes revels in its Kingdom Under Fire universe. It’s a clichéd place
with plenty of fantasy

Really, the story is the only significant change from Crusaders.
Everything else, including the graphics, control elements (though a
full-featured tutorial is all but stripped out of Heroes) and audio, is
not far removed from the original. This shouldn’t be taken as a negative
though – battles are still epic in size and scope, the strategic
elements still need to be thought

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over and it’s probably the most unforgiving
action/strategy title ever. While Crusaders was difficult, Heroes likes
to kick the player in the groin, repeatedly and often with a steel-toed
boot. When the player does triumph there is a real sense of
accomplishment especially after fighting through some titanic, multipart
mission that not only test your button-mashing abilities but also your
strategic senses.

The player has specific control over one hero during melee combat – that
starts when two or more groups of enemy soldiers clash – and has
general, on-the-fly, control over groups of soldiers, telling them to
“move there” and “kill that” on the more strategic and somewhat overhead
view. Positioning troops before and during attacks is the key to
victory. Positioning archers on a hill with the sun behind them offers
decent attack bonuses, and anyone or anything on higher ground has the
advantage. The player also has to be wary of the rock-paper-scissors
nature of the units. (Sending cavalry against spearmen is not a good
idea.) Unfortunately, some of this can only be discovered with a bit of
trial and error and on a mission that might last upwards of an hour –
I’m not kidding – suddenly running up against some “trial and error”
elicits the kind of language you’d expect from Tony Montana if he had
Tourette’s syndrome.

Once the player learns the basic ins and outs of the each unit, the
frustration diminishes somewhat but the save system steps in to ensure
continued annoyance and numerous play-throughs. The player only has the
opportunity to save between missions. If there was one “feature” I could
banish from gaming it would be between-mission save points. Heroes
doesn’t even have the courtesy of a checkpoint system! This necessitates
blocking off a few hours at a time to even complete one mission.

Also between mission, the player gets to allocate XP among the troops
and officers and spend gold to upgrade armor and weapons. Like
Crusaders, there just never seems to be enough XP or gold to go around
and you’ll wind up spending an inordinate amount of time weighing the
pros and cons of each choice.

If the player gets completely stymied there is the option to play one of
the other Hero campaigns (there are seven) but most don’t become
unlockable unless extensive progress has been achieved in select
campaigns. Fortunately, Heroes features a full roster of online modes
that heighten the overall value of the game. Hero Battle Mode has two
options: Hero Battle (basically team deathmatch) and Invasion, which
pits up to three players against invading enemy controlled by the
computer AI. Troop Battle Mode offers Friendly and Ladder Matches, but
my favorite online mode was Invasion. Even playing with a competent
squad of human players, it always offered a good challenge and a lot of
fun.

Strangely enough, I continually came back to the campaign mode. Am I
glutton for punishment or does Heroes contain a magic mix of gameplay
that makes it thoroughly addictive? It must be a bit of both – and I
wanted to see what other strange localization issues cropped up. (There
are some truly hilarious translations!)

If you liked Crusaders, you’ll be pleased with Heroes. While it’s
comparatively short development cycle might be a danger sign, Heroes
still manages to fire on all cylinders. But the same advice I offered
for Crusaders still applies: it’s “a rewarding experience if you’re
willing to put in the time.” It also doesn’t hurt if you can withstand a
moderate amount of frustration.